


Crossroads

by Tarlan



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Blood and Torture, Community: trope_bingo, Gen, Season/Series 04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-27
Updated: 2018-04-27
Packaged: 2019-04-28 14:40:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14451429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tarlan/pseuds/Tarlan
Summary: Dean is dragged first to Hell then back to Earth. Now he stands at a new crossroads with an angel instead of a demon.





	Crossroads

**Author's Note:**

> For **Trope Bingo** R10: darkfic

When he made a deal to save Sam he knew it would have consequences. It didn't stop him from trying to find a way out of the deal he had made, of exchanging his life for Sam's. He fought hard but the hellhounds came for him eventually, tearing into him before they dragged him down to Hell.

For every month in the real world Dean felt as if a year had passed in Hell, and he spent the first of those four months in a Hellraiser movie remake, hung by hooks and tortured until he could no longer feel anything. Not pain, not compassion. He was as dead inside as his body in the real world. Once he was broken they left him alone for a time before starting a new brand of torture, turning him into one of them. So many souls fell into his hands. So many souls were shown the consequences of their sins on Earth as, tentatively at first, he honed his craft and became Hell's best torturer of souls. Without compassion he became the most feared of the damned in Hell, as single minded in his pursuit of inflicting pain as he had been in hunting down monsters. 

Rapists, murderers, thieves, and those without remorse soon begged for an end of their suffering at his hand. He cut them, whipped them with rusty, spiked chains. He tore them open, gutted like a fish, innards spilling to be devoured by lesser demons, then waited for their wounds to magically heal before starting all over again. They screamed until their throats were raw, just as he had screamed for what seemed like forever.

In Hell he became the monster, no different to the ones he had hunted so tenaciously on Earth.

He once asked Alistair, Hell's grand torturer, "Where are all the monsters? The vamps and skinwalkers."

"Only souls rise to Heaven or fall to Hell."

Dean excelled at torture, letting what remained of his humanity bury itself so deep he doubted it would ever come back to the light. Maybe that was for the best as he knew he could never survive an eternity of the same torment he inflicted upon others had he been whole.

Four months were a lifetime, and when the attack came he almost fought back against the invaders in some obscene version of Stockholm Syndrome, feeling the burn on his skin as something grabbed him by one shoulder and dragged him upwards. It shone so bright he felt it's light sear his eyes, struggling against its tight grip until a shredded remnant of his tortured soul recognized what was happening to him. Dean thrust a hand upwards to reach back for whatever creature held him in its tight grip and instead his hand shot through damp earth and grass. He dragged himself out of the ground, breathing fresh air and feeling a cool breeze on his face after months... years... decades of fetid breath, the copper tang of blood, and furnace hot air.

Some things should change a person; he still felt dead inside.

"Why would an angel rescue me from Hell?" he snarled at Castiel, because he knew what he had done in Hell. He knew how many souls he had tortured after his own was broken and vanquished into the darkest recesses of his mind.

"Good things do happen, Dean."

"Not in my experience."

Dean knew he was standing at a different crossroads, this time with an angel rather than a demon. As he looked into puzzled blue eyes he knew he could choose to believe there was a God who had commanded Castiel to save him for some Holy War, or he could go back to Hell.

Neither option appealed.

END  
 


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